Alexander Dillon Details the Ins and Outs of Business Capital Management
October 15, 2022By the age of 32, Alexander Dillon had already built the type of career that most entrepreneurs merely dream of.
After graduating from the University of Maryland, he started Blackbridge Capital in 2012. This successful investment firm quickly made a name for itself in the industry. He launched a new investment firm, GenCap Management, in 2021. During this hectic period in his life, he also somehow found the time to get married and start a successful restaurant with two of his childhood friends.
All of this is to say that Dillion is already very experienced in what it takes to be not just an entrepreneur, but a successful one. In his opinion, the aspect of the process that most people fail to pay enough attention to is business capital management. But what is it in a larger sense, and what can you do to ensure you’re following all of the appropriate best practices? The answers to those questions depend on you keeping a few key things in mind.
Business Capital Management: An Overview
At its core, business capital management involves the management of both the assets and liabilities within an organization. To put it another way, it involves making sure that an organization always has enough assets to effectively handle both debts and other liabilities without any risk to the business itself.
One essential way to get to this point, especially for a young business, involves taking better control over how payments are handled. Never forget that cash flow doesn’t just refer to money coming into a business – it also references money heading out of it, too.
For your part, be sure to pay vendors on time as often as possible. Be mindful when negotiating terms regarding a schedule that you can realistically keep. This will require a fair amount of discipline, but you and your business will improve because of it.
Note that this is also very much a two-way street. To keep that cash flowing, you also need to ensure that you’re being paid on time when you send out invoices. As soon as the payment date on the invoice lapses, you need to make sure that you’re contacting vendors and other partners to inquire about what is going on. If you haven’t already done so, convert as much of your payables and receivables processes to digital to make it easier for everyone involved.
Electronic invoices can not only make sure you get your money faster, but they can make it easier to maintain viability over the process as well.
Likewise, you need to be very careful about the working capital financing you receive. Yes, getting funding to remain liquid and grow your business is something that most organizations do. But don’t take on debt for the sake of it – take on debt to finance an opportunity that will yield a significant return in the long run.
Don’t saddle yourself with debt and high interest rates for something that you simply want and don’t need at the moment. Financially speaking, every decision you make should be one with an eye firmly fixed on the future.
In the end, proper business capital management best practices may seem straightforward. But for Alexander Dillon, they’re a big part of the process he followed to achieve the level of success that he enjoys today, and he’s also excited to help as many people as possible learn these lessons.